


Astrum Obvenio

by giraffles



Series: Heavenfall [1]
Category: Dragon Ball
Genre: Abuse, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Dragon Ball Shenanigans, Eventual Relationships, Eventual Smut, F/M, Fluff, Headcanon, Hijinks & Shenanigans, M/M, Multi, NaNoWriMo, Original Character(s), Slow Burn, Violence, WELCOME TO VEGEBUL HELL EVERYONE, enjoy your stay, if you don't like ocs you're (eventually) going to have a bad time, if you don't like speculation on canon ur gonna have a bad time, with a side order of yams
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-04
Updated: 2018-01-07
Packaged: 2018-05-11 16:54:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 21,130
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5634088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/giraffles/pseuds/giraffles
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i><b>astrum</b>; latin for 'star, constellation, glory, immortality, Heaven'. <b>obvenio</b>; latin for 'come, meet, happen, come up, fall, occur'</i>
</p><p> </p><p>In this universe, things went a little differently-- with a space pod crashing into one girl's lawn and an unlikely relationship is forged. Except there's still a galactic warlord out for blood, a planet that might have ended up as space dust, and countless enemies across space and time that won't rest until everything has gone to hell in a handbasket. </p><p>Oh, yeah, and they should probably find those dragon balls.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Trust Falling

**Author's Note:**

> Dedicated to my wifequeen Hainzy <3

The day had started pretty normally. Bright sun, few clouds, the unbearable heat that kept her indoors for the most part. Summer was sweltering in West City—the phenomenon caused by the refraction of UV rays on all the asphalt and concrete. Her house at least was an oasis in the helter-skelter turmoil of city life, and she had air conditioning to boot. Besides, with her parents out of town at some tech convention, she didn’t exactly have anyone to play with. So why bother going outside when all her engineering books and half finished projects were inside?

But then there was a terrible sound and the floors and walls shook as though an earthquake had struck; except they were nowhere near a fault line, and it was too close to be a public demolition project. Mrs. Potts whistled in alarm as one of the far windows cracked from the force of something—and that’s when she saw the smoke. Something had fallen into the front lawn, and had made a sizable crater. 

Many children of her age would have been terrified. Awestruck and scrambling for the telephone to call the police. Crying for a parent maybe. Not Bulma Briefs, six years old and  _ very _ mature for her age. Ignoring the concerned trill of the house robot, she bolted out the door to investigate. What kind of scientist would she be if she didn’t  find out what was going on? 

The earth around the crater was still incredibly hot. In the center was a round metal object, spherical and foreign. It was like no satellite design she had ever seen, or even of any terrestrial craft currently in use. Judging from the size and depth of the impact crater, it had fallen at least from the stratosphere, if not from higher up. Her mind whirled at full speed—it was unlikely, but what if? What if it wasn’t man made? Or even from this solar system? 

The idea was riveting. Exciting. Aliens! Aliens here, right at her house! Of course, she’d have to go confirm that. It wouldn’t do to assume and then be proven wrong later. She skidded down the bank of the crater, the torn soil still steaming, heedless of the streaks of dirt accumulating on her dress. 

The sphere was larger up close, but seemed a bit small anyway for a space-fairing craft. Maybe it was just a satellite, fallen here from a test launch, and nothing special after all. What a disappointment that would be. Unavoidable, she supposed. But as she got closer she realized, no, that was definitely a window on a door of some sort, and if she wasn’t mistaken, there was someone inside. Interest aflame, she stepped up and tried to peer within, but it was blurry and hard to see through. With a frown she tapped on the front. Once, twice, then again. 

      “Hello?” she ventured, not sure if they could hear her, or if they would even understand her if they did, “Is anyone in there?” 

Long moments later she was about to give up when the thing began to hiss. Stepping back just to be on the safe side, she watched as the pod unfolded it’s door. Out from the depths stepped a boy who couldn’t have been any older than her, looking decidedly normal, save for the fact that he was just in a round metal ball. He wore some sort of strange clothes that she could only think of as some kind of armor, and a flashy red cape that absolutely clashed with the colors of everything. It was almost unnaturally colorful, and didn’t suit his wild black hair or tanned skin. He made a sour face at her. He didn’t look like an alien at all. 

      “Are you… okay?” she figured it didn’t  hurt to ask, considering he had fallen such a long way. 

He stared at her long and hard, before finally speaking, “I’m  _ fine _ .” 

His growl and attitude took her aback, and it was then too that she noticed his  _ tail _ , swishing behind him aggressively as though it had a mind of it’s own. 

      “It’s no concern of yours, anyway,” said dismissively, glancing about, “What planet is this?” 

Well, that just confirmed it. He was an alien! Funny, though, she always thought visitors from across the galaxy would be a little… different? Exotic? Stranger than Earth? Well, she supposed it really didn’t matter, as long as he’s okay. Even with tail and the attitude problem. 

      “Oh—uh,” she stammered, “You’re on Earth. Where are you from?” 

      “Never heard of it,” he scowled, “And why do you want to know?” 

She placed her hands on her hips. The nerve of him! “Because I told you where you are, so it’s only fair for you to answer a question of mine!” 

It made perfect sense to her; fair was fair, even though she was starting to think that being cooperative isn’t something he’s very good at. 

      “Well, answer me this at least,” she had to get an answer to something, “Are you really from space? I mean, your ship  _ looks _ like a spaceship, so is it? I’m going to guess you’re an alien!” 

      “Life isn’t fair,” he glowered, “And you’ve probably never heard of it.” 

      “Well, that’s why I’m asking what it is!” God, he really was difficult. 

      “Fine,” he muttered, casting a glare at her, “I’m from Vegeta-sei.” 

      “See? That wasn’t so hard!” 

      “You’re testing my patience, girl. Where is the nearest repair center?” 

Repair center? “Is your ship broken?” 

      “Yes, why else would I be on this miserable excuse for a planet—“ 

      “Hey!” she interjected, “Earth is a perfectly  _ nice _ planet!” 

He looked unconvinced. She’s have find a way to prove it to him. But moving on; 

      “But if you need it to be fixed, my dad could probably take a look at it. He makes a lot of things, too.” 

She was sure her father would absolutely love to take a look at the craft, and it was the perfect excuse to keep the boy around too. She wanted to learn more about space, about how they traveled through it in such a small pod, and what his planet was like. And she also just scored a new playmate. 

      “Good.” He sounded pleased, “Bring me to him.” 

Oh, well, that was a problem. “Um, I would but… he’s not here right now.” Oops. Probably should have mentioned that from the start. “My parents are off at a convention right now, to sell their products.” 

      “But, you’re welcome to stay until they get back!” she offered cheerfully when his face began to fall, “I’m sure Mrs. Potts would be alright with a guest for a while.”

      “You can’t be serious.” Those dark eyes bore into her. The boy huffed. He kicked at the ground, scoffed, then shrugged. “Fine, I’ll wait for them here.” 

      “Out here? For a whole  _ week? _ ” There was camping, and then there was just being silly. She had a perfectly good house right over there. “Are you sure you want to? You’d be much more comfortable inside. Mr. Potts can make us snacks! She’s really good at it!” 

      “I’ve had worse,” he countered. Then his eyes narrowed as he looked at her with suspicion.  “How do I know it’s not a trap?” 

      “Why would I want to do that?” Sure, he’d been a little rude, but that was no reason to be mean in return. She was determined to be a good host and do what she could to help; cutting words or not, as far as she could tell he was just a lost little boy. And she was only six herself, what could a sweet girl like her possibly do to him? “I’m not going to hurt you, y’know?” 

      “And I’m just supposed to take your word that you’re telling the truth.” What an overly cautious kid; but maybe that came with the territory of being a space traveler. She’s been warned herself not to talk to anyone strange, though certainly an exception could be made for a wayward alien in need. 

He gave her a flippant wave of his hand. “Fine, lead the way. But you had better not be lying.” 

She couldn’t help the grin that broke out over her face. Finally! It had been forever since she had someone else to hangout with, with her parents busy with Capsule Corps’ new release, and her being just a bit too young to adventure around the city by herself. He might not know it yet, but he just signed up for a playdate. 

      “Good! I’ll have Mrs. Potts make something to eat, then we can play in the backyard.”

She started to climb back out of the crater, trusting him to follow her up the incline and to the door. She was mildly surprised then to find him already on the edge, beating her some how. His face looked as dark as when she had first seen him and she resisted the urge to ask if it had frozen like that

      “I don’t want to play,” he huffed, “That’s  _ childish _ .” 

He wasn’t… wrong, but, he was just a kid too, wasn’t he? And it would be fun—who would turn down an afternoon of fun? Did they not have that in space? “But we could make a fort or something, I’m sure we could take the pillows and sheets out just this once!” 

Arms crossed, tail thrashing, he looked thoroughly unconvinced. “Yes, childish. Just like you. Why would make a fort out of such flimsy things—“ 

And that was the last comment to push her over the edge. She angrily brushed smudges off her dress and stomped a foot. Here she was, trying to be nice, gracious and accommodating, and he just snubbed her at every turn. 

      “Fine! Then you won’t get any snacks!” Two could play at this game. Her hospitality only ran so deep, and there was only so much that she could put up with from a brat, even if he was from space. She almost made it to the front door before a voice called out behind her. 

      “Wait!” there was an edge of annoyance there. She spun to face him with a frown. “I just meant that you should make it out of something else! Something more strategically sound.”

That sounded all well and good, but considering she was not very tall and not allowed to operate the power tools, they weren’t going to get very far with sturdier building materials. And she wasn’t about to let a kid she’s just met handle the nail gun. She pouted. 

       “What else is there?” 

He paused, then his eyes darted about. “It looks like you have an abundance of trees. Use some of them.” 

She scoffed at the idea, “And how are we supposed to do that? You can’t just knock trees down, they’re, well, trees!” 

A gleam rose in those dark eyes, and she was struck by the fact that while they seemed a lot like her own, there was something different about them. Something luminous and new. Something predatory. 

      “Like  _ this _ ,” he declared, and stalked over to the largest shade tree they had. Small hands gripped the trunk and she wondered if maybe he was a little crazy. Did going into space make you crazy? That would be unfortunate. But then the wood creaked, it whined and protested, and not even the far reaching roots could save it as the boy tore it from the earth, lifting it high as if it wasn’t heavy at all. She was a little startled. She might have been gaping at the spectacle, open mouthed. There might have been a twinge of fear, but it didn’t last. 

Yes, other people probably would have been scared witless. They might have run from the scene screaming. Would finally call the police, or even the military. But she wasn’t like most people, with her driving need to know the secrets of the universe outweighing any deep seated fight or flight instincts. It wasn’t scary. It was fascinating. 

Besides, he’d had no reason to hurt her. Sure he was a little blunt, a bit rude, unfriendly and dour, but that didn’t make him  _ bad _ . 

He threw the tree at her feet, making the earth rattle with the force, “Use that instead.” 

      “How?” she asked incredibly. What on earth was she supposed to do with an uprooted tree? “Did you have to take that one? My parents aren’t going to be very happy to find it gone—and it’s too big for a fort!” 

He suddenly became flustered. “Then plant another one!” 

      “Then what are we supposed to do with this one?!” 

      “Make your stupid fort out of it!” 

      “Yeah, but  _ how _ \--“ 

He punched it. Hard. She probably should have yelled at him about the dangers of splinters, but she was too busy watching him smash it apart into smaller pieces. Which were still pretty big, but she supposed they would be a little more manageable like this. 

      “There,” he seemed rather proud of himself, “Now you have building materials. Do you have a defensible location?” 

      “Defensible?” He kept treating a game like real life, as if they needed it to be functional rather than a passing stage for play. “Would the back yard work? Behind the house?” 

He shrugged. “If that’s the best place. Bring this back there.” 

      “I can’t carry all of this!” regardless of the fact that she was a lady and shouldn’t  have to do things like manual labor, there was no way she’d be able to lift even a single piece of the shattered wood. This is why she said sheets and pillows. But she started picking up broken sticks and gathering them into a bundle; maybe they could have a campfire later, with s’mores and everything. “You get the big pieces.” 

      “Do I have to do everything?” he grumbled but started cleaning up his mess anyhow, making for the backyard. He paused. “You secure provisions, then. Surely you can handle that.” 

      “Well, yes, but,” she frowned, “You’re not seriously stocking this for war, are you?” 

      “Of course I am!” he called back, “I told you, we’re doing this right!” 

 

♤

 

He was surprisingly skilled at fort crafting for someone, who of his own admission, had never done it before. But he was so deathly serious about the whole affair—ensuring that it was as strong as possible, had all possible vantage points accounted for and all weaknesses protected, and judged her stock pile of snacks that she had dug out of the cupboard. She had told him off about that—if he was going to be sulky about it, then he didn’t have to eat them! He rescinded his previous judgment rather quickly at that. 

All in all, it was a pretty nice fort. A shame that the old oak from the front yard had to fall for it, but she was sure her parents would forgive them. He hadn’t known any better, really; and no one made handbooks on earth customs and norms. It was a pretty great feat of construction all things considered, and even if he did most of the work, she still considered it a team effort. She did her best after all. 

The crowning achievement had to be the flag. He shunned her offerings of sheets or old pillowcases, saying they weren’t eye catching enough or too ratty for official use. Whatever that meant. So he took off his cape with a grumble, the garishly red thing that it was, and they planned to tie it to a pole after she got some dark paint to decorate it. He put a symbol on it, one that she only recognized because it was also printed on the armor he wore, so of course she asked what it meant. 

      “It’s the Saiyan royal crest,” he declared, chest puffed full of pride, “Though I don’t expect a peasant like you to know that.”

      “For your information,” she huffed back as she painted the Capsule Corp logo next to the design he made, “My daddy says I’m a princess.” 

      “A princess.” He sounded unconvinced as they raised the makeshift flag for both of them, “A princess of what, exactly?” 

      “My daddy’s company,” she explained, “We make dynocaps for the whole world! I’d say we’re pretty important.” 

He snorted, “Then you can be queen of the fort.”

She thought she rather liked the sound of that. She giggled, pilling pillows and bedding and throwing couch cousins at him. “What, does that make you king of it, then?” 

      “I don’t need to be king of a silly fort on your silly planet,” he sniffed, “I’m already a prince.” 

      “Nu-uh!” 

He threw a pillow back at her with more force that was necessary. “I am!”

      “Yeah, right.” She was laughing, even as it was clear his rage was growing, “How am I supposed to believe that?” 

      “Because I’m not a liar!” he all but shrieked and she knew that regardless of the truth it was time to compromise. 

      “Okay, okay! I believe you!” Even though she really didn’t, “But if you’re a prince, what are you doing out here? Shouldn’t you be at home doing… whatever it is that a prince does?” She was trying to defuse the situation, but somehow she only made it worse. He got very quiet after she said that, but he was livid. That much was clear as the sky above them, and she knew there was some sort of line she had crossed. 

      “Nevermind, it doesn’t matter.” She offered as she pinned a sheet to a gap in the wood pieces to form a window of sorts, “Tell me about your planet?” 

He grumbled, but she had found the right way to turn the situation around, playing on that overwhelming sense of pride he had. The bag of chips she chose to open for them probably didn’t hurt either. 

      “It’s bigger than this one.”

      “How can you tell?”

      “The gravity is different. It isn’t as high.” The chips didn’t last long at all. She supposed space travel made you hungry, so she opened the store bought cookies next. “What are these?”

      “Chocolate chip.” 

He said he had no idea what that meant but he ate them anyway. Apparently chocolate didn’t exist wherever he was from. And that’s when she realized—

      “I don’t even know your name!” 

      “And I don’t know yours. What does it matter?”

      “It matters a lot!” she exclaimed, “What am I supposed to call you? What are you going to call me? Hold on, you  _ do _ have a name, don’t you?” 

      “Of course I do!”

He didn’t offer one. So she held the remaining snacks out of reach while he glared at her, tail swishing back and forth like an annoyed feline. 

      “If you must know,” he scoffed, “It’s Vegeta.” 

She was confused but handed the candy over to him anyway, “Wasn’t that the name of your planet, though?”

      “Yes.” 

      “…Are you named after the planet?”

      “No, the planet is named after the royal family! Honestly, girl—“ 

      “It’s not ‘girl’! My name is Bulma--!”

      “Honestly,  _ Bulma _ , how hard is this to understand? It’s my father’s name too.” 

      “But doesn’t that get confusing?” 

Goodness, their snacks disappeared rather fast when he was around. “No.” 

      “Well I think it would get confusing, sharing a name with so many other things! Wouldn’t you want to know when people are talking about you, not your dad or the planet?” 

      “I do know,” he said in an irritated voice, “Our language does that much better than yours.” 

All these questions were getting her more questions than solid answers. “Oh! Really? Can you show me?”

      “I suppose I don’t have anything better to do. Get something to write on.” 

      “Okay!” she jumped up and tumbled back into the house proper, assuring Mrs. Potts that everything was well and good, and asking her to grab more food for them, since he had devoured their stock so fast. Really, where did he put it all? In her room she went searching for a notebook that didn’t have anything too important in it, like top secret designs for inventions or diary entries about how the other children at school were just too jealous of her to be her friend, and eventually found a suitable one. Pink, containing a few bored doodles from math class, and a pen already tucked in the binding. She took both it and the resupply box out to their very awesome fort but stopped just shy of the entrance. 

There was that tail of his. It was obviously attached, and one of the few things that marked him as not of this world—and even that wasn’t accurate, because there were plenty of animal-folk about, especially in the city. But it was just so different, so fun to watch, and she wanted to know if it was as soft as it looked. She also had a feeling he would be too stingy to let her touch it willingly, so she left her things by the door and proceeded with her sneaky plan. 

Either he wasn’t paying attention, or simply didn’t think she would do such a thing, she didn’t know, but she was able to catch the waving tail while his back was turned to her. It was just as soft and furry as she expected, but what she hadn’t prepared for was his reaction—he gave a squeal and fell then weakly flailed on the ground, an image at odds with the spectacle of him tearing up a tree and smashing it to pieces single handedly. She probably should have dropped it, but she held onto it all the same. 

      “What’s wrong?” 

      “Let go.” he snarled, but with an edge of desperation to it, “ _ Let go! _ ” 

She tugged experimentally. He shrieked. “Why?”

      “Because it  _ hurts! _ ” Another flail, another distressed sound. “Stop it!” 

That time she did let go, and she felt a little guilty when he skittered away, tail wrapping tightly around his waist and a betrayed look in his eyes. “Don’t do that  _ ever again! _ ” 

      “I didn’t—“ Oh no, this was different from their silly fights and back and forth banter. She hadn’t meant to hurt him. “I didn’t know! I didn’t mean to, I just, I just wanted to touch it!” 

Before she could help it, she was crying. It was happening all over again, she’d messed it up, trying to make a friend but making an enemy instead. Maybe they were right and she really didn’t deserve any friends. Vision cloudy, she tried to apologize, but it was so hard when tears choked her up. 

      “Don’t—don’t cry.” Came a hurried voice, “Just—don’t, it’s fine, just—stop.”

Hands came to awkwardly pat her shoulders. She sniffled. 

      “I’m sorry.” 

He grumbled. “Whatever. Just don’t do it again.” 

She nodded vigorously, scrubbing her eyes with the back of her hands. “I won’t.” 

  
At least, not until he was mean to her again.


	2. Freedom Hangs Like Heaven

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And here we have adventures in playtime, maybe it'll do his dark little heart some good.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for abuse towards the end.

It was indeed a week later when the two Briefs’ parents came home to find that they were housing an additional child of strange origins. It had been a pretty uneventful week since he had initially crashed there—he was convinced that a passing solar flare must have fried something in the navigation systems for him to be thrown so off course, and away from the rest of his comrades—but there had been nothing he could do but wait. He wasn’t stupid by any means, but that had no bearing on the fact that he had no idea how to repair a ship, and he wasn’t about to go back out until he was sure it was in working order. Besides, even if the girl was aggravating, she was useful and staying there wasn’t terrible. It was just less than ideal.

  
He honestly wasn’t sure how her parents were going to react to finding an alien prince sitting in their kitchen. Fear would have been appropriate, but if Bulma was any indication, this species lacked a sensible reaction to beings stronger than them. They might be angry that he was there, or even refuse to fix the ship. This would force him to bully them into it, which was always a hassle. It was easier when people just did what he wanted and were done with it.

  
He certainly hadn’t expected them to be so calm about the whole thing. He could have killed her, could have raided the whole city, razed half the country to the ground. Yet they listened intently to their daughters rambling story with the mother smothering him in affection while her father went to investigate the pod. Before he knew it, they were all sitting around the table together for dinner.

  
What in the hells was happening.

  
It was harder than he imagined to be domineering or threatening with them. He could say whatever he wanted to the woman and she’d just tell him how cute he was. Even when he insisted that he was not at all cute. Everything would dissipate, like water on dry sand. He was a _warrior_ , and warriors didn’t do things like be ‘adorable’ or ‘sweet’. He couldn’t tell half the time if the man was taking him seriously or not. At some moments, the man listened to him with a grave importance yet by the next would be cracking jokes and sending him outside to play with the child.

  
      “It might be a while,” Dr. Briefs had shrugged after he had finally removed some of the paneling on the pod, “I’ve honestly never seen anything like this before. I don’t want to break it anymore!”

So, with a vague, nearly non-existent timetable in place, he was utterly trapped on this strange blue planet full of too much green and strange girls who were hellbent on befriending him. She was the largest enigma of it all. Her emotions fluctuated wildly, almost to a terrifying degree, flying between playful and mild to bossy and dominant. And she cried at nearly anything; it was impossible to know what would set her off and he couldn’t stand the waterworks. It wasn’t that he felt bad for her, oh no, it was just aggravating. More trouble than it was worth. So, he avoided it at all costs.

  
One rainy morning (really, it rained so much here that he was surprised they hadn’t all been washed away), she took his hand and hauled him into the kitchen, declaring that they were making cookies.

  
      “But why?” He demanded, not at all looking forward to her brand of playtime. “You got them from a box last time, didn’t you—“

  
      “Homemade are _always_ better,” she insisted. She pulled bowls out of cabinets and hauled a stool over so she could reach the counter. “Haven’t you ever had home-baked cookies before?”

  
      “No.” He never knew what they were until he landed on this moon goddess-forsaken planet. Besides, he thought their concoctions like ‘spaghetti’ and ‘waffles’ were much better anyway. “So why do I have to help?”

  
      “Because I’m not allowed in the kitchen alone,” with her hands on her hips she pouted at him, “And I need your help reaching things!”

  
Which made no sense, because she was in fact taller than him but he kept forgetting she couldn’t fly. What a bunch of pathetic creatures whose power levels barely registered on the scouter’s scans. The first time she had caught him floating in midair she had screamed bloody murder, which really wasn’t fair considering she had startled _him_. He jumped and flitted away to a safe distance. Once she had gotten over her initial shock, apparently people here couldn’t use their energy in the same way, she had pestered him at every turn to use and abuse his abilities. Even though she said she’d stay away from his tail, it didn’t stop her from threatening to handle it when she wanted to get her way. She was crafty; she would wait until he thought danger had passed then yank for all she was worth. In that sense, it might have been a good thing that humans were so puny and weak.

  
      “Fine,” he sighed. He only had to put up with this as long as he was stuck here. “What do you need?”

  
      “The flour. It’s up there in the bag.” She pointed to a high shelf. It was a simple matter to focus the power within him and defy gravity’s pull, rising up to retrieve the bag she had specified then deposit it beside her. She grinned.

  
      “Now, come over here and hold the bowl for me!”

  
Her demands never seemed to ceased. The most alarming part of it was that he found himself going along with it more often than not. It was strange. Unbecoming. Yet he never caught it before it was too late. Like now, as he held the glass bowl steady while she struggled to open the bag.

  
      “Are you really that weak?”

  
      “Oh, shut up!” She snapped, “It’s not my fault they probably sealed it with super glue—“

  
At that moment, she was successful in tearing the paper container open. Except, it didn’t come apart neatly or in a controlled manner. No, it exploded. _Everywhere_. On her, on the counters, and mostly on him, dusting everything within sight in a white powder. She sneezed.

  
      “Oops.”

  
Oh, sweet moon goddess. Give him the strength to get through this trial.

  
      “How the hell did you manage that--!”

  
      “Language!” She smacked him with a plastic, flour covered spoon, “It’s fine, there’s still enough here for cookies.”

  
The lashing of his tail probably didn’t help the white cloudy mess, but he couldn’t exactly stop it. “Is this why you’re not allowed in here alone?”

  
      “Shut up!”

  
That meant he was probably right. They were in too deep now; they might as well finish what they started.

  
She was an odd girl. Not that the whole lot of them weren’t strange, they were exceedingly so. Yet, she seemed to top the list. Or, maybe, it was just them and he had managed to stumble in on the strangest family on this entire planet. They certainly didn’t act like any alien race he had ever met.

  
To be fair, everyone in the Acrosian’s army was pretty pissy. And the ones that they stamped out before selling their planet off were never very happy about that fact. It wasn’t his fault they were all weaklings, incapable of stopping a handful of soldiers from taking what they couldn’t defend. They had only themselves to blame. If they couldn’t keep ahold of it then they didn’t deserve it. And, someday, he’d take his own planet back, rip it from that mutant’s slimy grasp, and rule it — as it was his birthright to. He didn’t have the power now and every minute on this pathetic rock was a moment he was further away from achieving his goal. He growled at the bowl as she cracked eggs into it. She threatened to put the shells in his hair.

  
♤

  
It wasn’t entirely bad. Though, it probably could have been better—there was something about these people that put him on edge in a way that was hard to identify, hard to conquer, and wipe out. A foreign, unwelcome thing that needed to be subjugated, pushed down, and away.

Their kindness made him nervous.

When he was nervous, his hold over his own strength tended to be forgotten. He ripped a door right off its hinges the one time the girl startled him, popping out from behind a piece of furniture. Or when the woman insisted that he was just absolutely adorable and hugged him. He might have shattered the plate he was holding. He had, grudgingly, apologized for the whole tree incident. They laughed all of it off—told him not to worry about it, that these things were easily fixed. It wasn’t his fault their house couldn’t handle a Saiyan’s touch.

  
He was sure that at some point it would break. Someone would attack him. The cookies would be poisoned. Their ulterior motives would be revealed in one fell swoop, proving him right from the start. It never happened. They kept on being nice. Letting him stay there, free of any sort of repayment — save the girl’s constant pestering. He came to understand, a bit, because it sounded as if the others in her peer group couldn’t stand her — now he couldn’t imagine why that might be. Not at all. She was too damn smart for her own good, conniving, devious in a way that would have gotten her far in the army — if she wasn’t so sweet and innocent on top of it.

  
She made things out of scraps of wires and spare parts that would put their greatest engineers to shame. She rattled on about complicated theory as if she was describing the weather, sometimes at such a breakneck pace that it was hard for him to follow. He was intelligent enough in his own right, and had studied a fair amount in his spare time, yet the grasp she had on things such as quantum physics was astounding. And she was three years younger than him.

  
She insisted that they spend every waking moment doing something. It was as if she never stopped moving. It was one thing to keep busy, to avoid idleness that lead to complacency that ultimately resulted in death. This was another thing entirely, needing constant involvement in even the most insignificant of things.

  
Like, for example, when she threw a towel at him and declared that they were going to the beach.

  
He had no idea why you would go to a beach or what you could get there that you couldn’t get somewhere else. Water? Sand? Dead sea creatures? It’s not a place that he would assume she would like to go, but then her mother insisted and, grumbling all the while, he went along with it.

  
Her mother handed him a different outfit. When she had gone to find things in his size was unknown. She insisted that he really shouldn’t wear his battle suit. They’d gotten him out of full armor weeks ago.

  
      “It should fit,” she said with her customary smile that never dimmed or faded, “I even made a hole for that cute tail of yours!”

  
      “It’s not _cute_ ,” he replied, for the one hundredth time, to which she never listened, “It’s the source of a Saiyan’s power—“

  
But she was already off, packing a box full of food and other things, leaving him to hide in the spare room he’d taken over and change. They were strange, human clothes. He supposed that he should go along with it for now. There might be a protocol he was unaware of, a silly law for whatever they were going to do. Being stuck here, he wasn’t overly keen on starting a fight. Not that he couldn’t demolish the city by himself but he’d rather avoid it. Besides, they haven’t done anything to warrant their destruction. Yet.

  
Now that he thought about it, this planet would probably fetch a decent price. Clean air, lots of water, habitable. Too bad it was in the middle of nowhere. That might put a damper on selling it. He huffed at the shirt he’d been given to wear, emblazoned with the logo of the family company.

  
Actually, the idea of killing all of them and selling the rock they once lived on for Frieza’s interstellar empire made him uneasy.

  
It’s because it would be a waste. Yes, that’s it, a waste of time and resources. It was hardly worth the effort. That was a perfectly reasonable explanation.

  
♤

  
Sand, he decided, was definitely on his list of terrain he did not enjoy, just before swamps with ice and snow topping the charts. It was shifty and gritty and all around not an ideal place to be. He couldn’t even fly, because either the girl or the mother would be trying to drag him back down if he did. And he liked his tail sand free, thank you very much.

  
He can hear it and smell the ocean on the air before it comes into view. It’s not just salt, it’s the stench of brackish pools left over from low tide, the musk of whatever creatures were screaming overhead, and the lingering hint of death as nature take it’s brutal course. They don’t notice, because their senses are so dull compared to him. Bulma is ecstatic to be there.

  
It’s not as crowded as he was lead to believe; and indeed they talk about a patch of private land that they’re headed to anyway, so he doesn’t see why he can’t fly, and—

  
—And over the crest of a dune is the sea of planet Earth and it’s so startlingly blinding and _blue_.

  
Color is relative. It varies from world to world. Atmospheric conditions, different mineral makeup, chemical compounds. A change in any one thing could mean a whole spectrum shift. But he’s never seen something so very bright and foreign and familiar before. He grabs the girl.

  
      “What?” She squeaks, frowning at the rough treatment as he hauls her before him, but offering little resistance. He looks at the ocean. He looks at her. She pouts.

  
      “You match.”

  
      “I what?” She’s confused, probably because he left out a bit of context there. “What do I match?”

  
      “That!” He waved to the sea and they sky, burning in cerulean shades. “All of that.”

  
Her nose scrunches up at him, and she gets this look that she takes on just before she’s about to treat him like he’s an idiot. “You’re _weird_.”

  
Any magic in the moment dissipates instantly. “Your _planet_ is weird.”

  
      “It is not!”

  
      “Is too!”

  
Then the woman is beckoning them further on, and she stomps away in the most dramatic fashion her tiny body can muster. Her ire is mostly cooled by the time he sulks in behind her. She has a shovel and pail ready for him.

  
      “We’re building a sand castle.” She announces, and she won’t take no for an answer, even though sand is a ludicrous material to be building castles out of. Oh, he’s caught on by now that it’s all pretend, but that doesn’t make it any less silly. He didn’t sign up for these ridiculous games, but he’ll play them if he has to. If there’s one thing he’s always been a fast learner for its tactics, which dictate that now is the time for compromise.

  
He still lets her do most of the work, because he put together that stupid fort all but single handedly. It’s her turn now if she wants a damp fortress decorated in seaweed. She babbles, as usual, about anything and everything; the way the tides work, how rocks and shells are ground down by harsh waves to make a hundred billion grains of sand, the scientific names of every flora and fauna in a fifty yard radius. Her bad mood from earlier is swept away like debris in the surf.

  
He refuses to get in the water. So in turn, she brings it to him, dumping a bucket over his head when he isn’t looking. So it’s only natural that of course he chases her into the thick of it.

  
♤

  
      “It’s a _legend_.” She whispered mysteriously, as though that explained it. He gave her an unamused look. She pouted, but pulled a musty book out of a pile, causing the rest to crash to the ground. She ignored the mess in favor of opening it and flipping through the yellowing pages.

  
      “Look, here—“

  
She pointed to an illustration, swirling of dark ink and what used to be vibrant paint, showing something that looked an awful lot like a giant worm (disgusting) and small orange orbs.

  
      “They’re called a lot of different things, but /this/ book says they’re ‘dragon balls’,” on closer inspection, the script was indeed something other than they used regularly. An old variation in their language, maybe. “And they grant wishes!”

  
      “That’s ridiculous.”

  
      “That’s why it’s a legend, duh.” She rolled her blue eyes, “Well, it might not be, but I haven’t confirmed that yet because they won’t let me go into the high clearance part of the national library.”

  
      “But,” she continued brightly, “If they are real, I’m going to find the rest of them and make a wish!”

  
      “What kind of wish?” he turned through the pages idly, “What are the restrictions?”

  
      “I don’t think there are any. Oh, you only get one though.”

  
One wish to do anything you wanted. That wouldn’t be half bad, actually. Too bad it probably wasn’t real. Just an old bedtime story to fill the heads of human children with hopeless ideas of adventure and grandeur.

  
      “Let me get the one I found.” she went to her closet, which was a disaster area, and threw things about haphazardly to find what she was looking for. Some sort of unfinished project almost hit him in the head. Then she pulled out what looked to be a homemade safe with a triumphant yell. She pushed in a complicated code made of numbers, colors, and shapes before it popped open, revealing a luminous ball. It was smaller than he would have thought.

  
      “Here,” she threw it over and he caught it deftly, “It’s pretty, at least!”

  
It was a strange stone. Orangish, glowing with its own contained power, and slightly warm to the touch. An odd object to be sure, but not the kind of thing that could grant wishes or shake worlds. Within the sphere where five red stars, shining faintly. He frowned at it.

  
      “You can keep it,” he tossed back, “It’s silly, anyway.”

  
      “It is not!” She pouted, as she was so wont to do, “If you help me find the rest, you can have the first wish!”

  
      “If you say so.”

  
♤

 

It was only two days later that the communications array on his space pod crackled to life after Dr. Briefs replaced the fried circuits. It shrieked in an alien language, and they had called him down to the lab immediately.

  
He didn’t like what he heard.

  
He was to return. _Immediately_ , and with all haste. He had been gone far too long, and even the excuse of being stranded on a backwater planet wasn’t enough to placate the snarling voice on the other end. Lord Frieza was _displeased_.

  
That was bad. Very bad. So fucking bad that he was almost tempted to stay. Almost.

  
      “But why?” It didn’t help when she started sniffling, tears gathering rapidly in her eyes, “Can’t you stay a little longer?”

  
      “No,” If she still wanted a planet to call home, then the sooner he got off it, the better, “I have important things to do.”

  
Like kill people for a living.

  
She was angry and devastated and vindictive all at the same time. How humans managed so many emotions all at the same time he would never know. “You had better call. And visit. And tell me all about space.”

  
      “I will.” Except he wouldn’t.

  
♤

  
The pain is nothing compared to the humiliation of it all. He can level cities, burn civilizations to the ground. Start rivers of blood. Have countless pathetic lives in the palm of his hand, or kneeling at his feet. And it all means nothing when the Acrosian’s hand is clamped tight around his throat.

He’ll have bruises for a week. He’ll feel it every time he takes an unhindered breath. And that’s the way the tyrant wants it.

  
Lessons don’t mean anything if they don’t _hurt_.

  
A sneer, and then he’s airborne, and he knows better than to try to stop himself from hitting the far wall with enough force to crack a rib or three. If he resisted, he’d be lucky if they’d only be broken. It was amazing what those healing pods could do even to those nearly eviscerated.

  
      “I try to be _patient_ with you,” the tone is even, and frozen cold, “And this is what you repay me with.”

  
He also knows better than to answer that.

  
The hand is on the front of his uniform now, hauling him upwards. It’s one of the few moments in his life that he knows what fear tastes like. It’s icy. Crawling and dry. Dead.

  
A sucker punch to the gut that he could see coming a solar system away and couldn’t do a damn thing about. He knows that it could be worse, that if the other wanted too he could rupture all his organs with a single blow, without even trying. The amount of control the Acrosian has over his own power is a terrifying thing indeed.

  
He’s still coughing blood when he’s dropped on the floor. He tries to rationalize that it was worth it.

  
He’s not so sure; really, he thinks, it might have been better not to have known what freedom felt like, under a blue sky and on a green world. It would have been better not to have that memory. There’s not much he can do about it now.

  
      “Maybe I’ll just add that one to the list,” he doesn’t follow what the tyrant means at first, but then his heart seizes up, “A nice rock. A little small, though, and dreadfully far out. But I think we could make do--“

  
      “No!” he’s startled by his own voice. The Acrosian is mildly shocked as well; he hasn’t talked back like that since that time the rebels on planet 182 escaped. It hadn’t been his fault, but that hadn’t mattered much to him. “Let… let me have it.”

  
      “Let _you_ have it?” a lofty disdain rained down on him, “Why would you think I’d let you have even the most worthless of mudballs?”

  
If anything, he’s getting good at thinking on his feet. If he wants to make it out of this with minimal injuries and his new favorite planet in one piece, he’s going to have to come up with something good. Something that the tyrant would enjoy.

  
      “If you let me have it,” Good moon goddesss, overlook the treason he’s about to spill, “I’ll serve in your army until I die.”

  
His life was the only thing he had to barter. He had to pray that it would be enough. He dared to raise his head when the silence dragged on.

  
      “ _Really_ ,” the demon smiled and it killed him a little inside, “What a tempting offer.”

  
      “I mean it,” don’t shake, don’t waver, don’t let him hear the racing of your heartbeat, “But it has to be mine and mine alone to do with what I see fit.”

  
Usually, showing a backbone to the mutant who ruled half the galaxy got you killed. Brutally. Often publicly. Sometimes however, it paid off in surprising ways. It really came down to his fickle whim on that day.

      “You have a deal, little _prince_.”

  
The way he said that made it clear it was an empty title.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And sadly, all good things must come to an end. Because I'm the worst. :'D Get ready for the time skip!
> 
> A big thank you again to all my beta readers for going through this chapter for me! And another thank you to everyone who's read this and enjoyed it so far, leaving me messages here and on tumblr-- I really appreciate it and it makes my day! \o/ 
> 
> And that being said, if you want to message me off AO3, feel free to hit up @cariisms on tumblr. c: I'd love to talk or answer any questions you have!


	3. Slipstream

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which someone comes back after a year or twelve.

Bulma was working under her car, fixing the hover module that had been malfunctioning. It kept pulling to the right, even if it seemed like nothing was wrong. Something was up and she was going to find it, come hell or fried circuits, regardless of the fact that she could probably pay a mechanic to do it for her. Pay a  _ shoddy _ mechanic, that is. School was out, she’d finally graduated, top of her class with a dual degree in physics and mechanical engineering; all at the blossoming age of eighteen, a record for West City U.

She’d applied under a fake name initially; working out a plan to get in on her own merit, and not just the prestige her name carried. Oh, she did love to use the influence of Capsule Corporation from time to time to get what she wanted, but this had been different. This she needed to do for herself. Too many had accused her in the past of being a fraud, some bluenette cruising through life on daddy’s trust fund. Not that she didn’t have a trust fund. There was more to her than money, fame, and beauty. The assholes didn’t think you could have all that and brains too. 

She’d have to go back at some point for biomechanics and astronomy, but that could wait until after the summer. She had things to do first. 

And this car needed to be in top shape if she was going to go on a world tour. It wouldn’t do for the lovely heiress of Capsule Corporation to be seen with a faulty piece of tech; and besides, she liked the puzzle, the challenge. She liked being able to understand why things worked. Taking them apart. Putting them back together. Connecting dots and mapping data. Finding the answers that no one seemed to have. 

Some would dare call her obsessive when she became invested in a project. She preferred words like ‘’driven’’ and ‘’focused’’, even if it had lead to a lot of sleepless nights and habitual abuse of the cappuccino machine. No one could argue with her results, however. 

It had been a quest for knowledge more than a decade in the making— now that she knew that there wasn’t just one world out past their own limits of science and gravity, she would never be satisfied with anything average life had to offer. Oh, she’d long accepted the fact that she had been forgotten,  _ abandoned _ , once again. She still didn’t make friends easily. Actually, she considered herself well above any shallow connections like that, as sometimes they were far too much effort to maintain. Most people couldn’t keep up with her anyway, and didn’t understand why she always carried copies of star charts and a case with a glowing orange orb around with her. 

They had never seen the dark, restless nights of her dragging a telescope up to the roof to look for signs of life, the same one that now collected dust in the back of her closet. Or when the department of defense had told her that she really, really shouldn’t be hacking into government databases to use their super computers to search billions of files, cross references for any mention of wish granting legends. They had been nice about it, at least. The one agent had even offered her a job for when she wasn’t thirteen and a half. 

Then the loudest crash she’d ever heard sounded, accompanied by a shaking and rattling of windows and a sense of déjà vu that sent her reeling and smashing her head into the car frame. The string of curses that fell from her mouth would have made a sailor proud. She groaned as she crawled out from under her project.

She assumed that her dad had blown something up with another experiment. At least, that is until she caught sight of the smoking crater out on the back lawn. She dropped the wrench in her hand. She let out a scream of unadulterated surprise. 

No way.  _ No fucking way _ . 

Bulma is pretty sure she’s dreaming as she tore the garage door open. She probably stayed up too late again and was asleep under her desk or something. Or maybe in the middle of a caffeine-induced hallucination. There was no way this was really happening after all this time. 

The crater, carving a circle of destruction in the landscaping her mother had so meticulously maintained, hissed angrily, warning her from the scene. The charred earth was still hot enough to score her skin, and she didn’t really care. She had to know if this was real. She welcomed the touch of pain that told her she might actually be conscious for this. Oh my god, this might actually be happening. 

And there was the pod, in the middle, smaller than she remembered it, but still the same. The door opened long before she could run to meet it. A figure stumbled out, half obscured by the steam and her own tears, but it was enough for a target to go running into full-tilt. They both nearly fell to the ground when she collided bodily with him, her embrace a death grip that was meant to force all the breath from him— because the jerk deserved it, after leaving for so long and not sending even a damn letter. 

A grunt and a growl, and then Vegeta is trying to pry her off, as though he would get off easy. 

      "You  _ asshole!"  _ she shrieked, heedless of the fact that she’s nearly screaming in his ear, "You said you’d come back!”

      “Shut up.” Comes the rumble, deeper than before, “Get off of me.”

      “I missed you too, you stupid…”

She trailed off when she realized there was something sticky and red on her. And that there was a whole lot more of it on Vegeta. Like, all over him. 

      “Holy shit, are you bleeding?” He grimaced and looked down. Then shrugged. “Oh my god, what happened—no, don’t answer that yet, just, how do you even have any blood  _ left? _ ”

He glowered. “It’s not all mine.” 

That didn’t make her feel any better. She put her hands on his face. He gave her this look that told her that she was crazy. She giggled. 

Good. He was real. And that was a start. 

 

♤

 

      “Where the hell have you been?” she asks later, after she’s thrown him in the shower and scrambled to find clothes that weren’t tattered and bloodstained for him to wear. She was also wrapping a clean dressing around the nasty gash in his arm, despite his instances for her not to bother. 

      “Trying not to die,” he growls back. He’s lost none of his abrasive nature over the long years. She’s not convinced if it’s a good thing or not. “Ironically, I’m now supposed to be dead.”

She clipped the bandage in place. “What is that supposed to mean?” 

Those hard eyes caught hers and she suddenly wished she hadn’t asked. But it was too late now. 

      “My planet is gone.” 

      “Gone?”

      “Blown up, destroyed, fucking space dust,” he’s suddenly a wounded wild animal, hissing and so very much on the defensive, “My entire race is dead.” 

That was a sobering thought indeed. Just what were you supposed to say to that? Sorry? That’s rough buddy, how are you handling it. Instead she asks, “…when?” 

      “Not long after I left.” He shrugs. He goes quiet. “They said it was a meteor. It wasn’t a goddess damned meteor.” 

She rolls up the extra cloth. She starts to pack up the first aid supplies, choosing her words carefully. “What was it, then?”

      “The  _ bastard  _ I’ve spent my whole life fighting for.” There’s a new level of venom in his voice that she’s never heard before. Frankly, it scared her. Scares her to think that he could be that angry. Scares her to think someone has that kind of power. “I’m actually surprised this planet is still here.” 

That stops her. “What does  _ that _ mean?”

      “It means that for the first time, a saiyan has failed to eradicate the local populace of the planet they’ve been sent to. Lucky for you.” 

      “Yeah. Lucky,” she echoes, dumbfounded, “Wait, what?”

      “You should be dead, woman,” he huffs, “He sent a child here to wipe you out, and for some reason that didn’t happen. It’s unthinkable, really, but I guess this is proof enough of their failure. Lucky.” 

He says it again. This is all a little too much, a little too fast, but she’s doing her best to keep up. It’s been theorized that her brain can rival a super computer—the downside to this is that it likes to try to process too many things at once, and they sometimes come out all jumbled up. 

       “Then why did you come back?” Not that she isn’t thrilled out of her mind to see him. She totally hasn’t been wishing, hoping for this day for years, only to wake up to the bitter truth that he wasn’t going to ever land there again. But in light of the information she just learned, she’d like to know why suddenly he was interested in returning. 

      “Because I wanted to see if you were still around, idiot,” she tries to protest that statement, but he just talks right over her, continuing, “And I have a favor to ask.” 

      “A favor?”

He starts to speak. He stops. He starts again, slowly. Quietly. “Did you ever find out if the rest of those dragon balls existed?” 

Bulma Briefs breaks into a smile. The answer is yes, she did, because they gave off a peculiar energy that she build a device to track and they had shown up as little blips on the grid. She’d also found more myths, legends, rumors about them in books about different cultures around the world. When she was eight, she had wanted to wish for a lifetime supply of strawberries. Now at eighteen, she was considering asking for the perfect boyfriend, someone tall dark and handsome, summoned just for her. 

But with Vegeta here, she supposes she can put that wish off for whatever he has planned. It might be vengeance, it might be asking for a home back, it might be something as dull as an ice cream sundae. One thing is for sure, however; 

She’s planning on having the adventure of a lifetime. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not happy with this one, but w/e. Needed to get it finished and out there so I can move on! :'D Thank you for reading, and a shout out to all my lovely beta readers!


	4. Double Down Under

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Very belated, because of RL things getting in the way, but here we are!

The closest point of interest as far as dragon balls are concerned is a mountain a few hundred miles out. Coincidentally, it’s also near the location of a “meteor” crash that happened about twelve years back—which Vegeta was convinced was the lost saiyan. So she was going to drop him off there first, let him look around, then swing back again after she found the ball they were looking for. But that still left a lot of time in a car with him sulking in the passenger seat. He’d insisted on putting his battle suit back on, regardless of how ratty around the edges it was, though she’d convinced him to leave the ridiculous armor behind. He still looked a little silly in a jump suit and nothing else but gloves and boots, but she let the issue lie. He was being pissy enough as it was.

She got it. She really did. It sucked, what happened, and there wasn’t much she could say or do to make it better. But that didn’t mean he had to take it out on her, especially when she was being so nice as to drive them. Though he had muttered about flying being faster; there was no way she was flying with him, nor was she about to give up her pride and joy dragon radar to him without proper supervision. Just because she was going to let him wish his planet and people back didn’t mean that she wasn’t going to tag along. She wanted to see that dragon too.

      “So,” she ventured, “How was space?”

      “Cold,” he shrugged, “Dark. Empty. The usual.”

He was a great conversationalist, as always.

      “Really? You didn’t do anything interesting the whole time you were out there?”

His glare could wither entire forests. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

      “Fine, you party pooper.” She revved the engine, and made to see just how fast her car could go with the new improvements. He made a sound of disapproval. “Then what do you want to talk about?”

      “Nothing.”

      “God, you’re so difficult.” How did anyone put up with him? “We’ve got a ways ‘till we get to the crash site though.”

He shrugged. There was nothing to be done about it.

 

* * *

 

      “Are you sure you’ll be okay,” he asked, again, for the one hundredth time. As if she was still six years old. His tail swirled in agitation. “Maybe I should go with you—“

      “For crying out loud,” she checked the radar again, “I’ll be _fine_ , stop fussing.”

      “I am not fussing,” he declared, suddenly on the defensive, “You just don’t know what a saiayn is truly capable of—“

      “Yeah, yeah, knocking down trees and breaking doors—“

      “Would you let that _go_ \--“

      “Nope,” she is never ever going to let him live those down. She dug around in her bag for a moment, pulling out a custom walkie talkie and throwing it at him. “If you’re that worried, check in on that, okay?”

He held it at arm’s length as if it smelled or something. The ass. “Did you make this one too?”

      “Yes, why?”

      “Fantastic,” he muttered, “If it’s anything like your damn flying car, I’m sure it’ll be _exceedingly_ useful.”

      “Shove it, your highness,” She snapped as she climbed back behind the wheel, “Go find that dumb pod and I’ll meet back up with you later. Okay?”

      “Whatever.”

 

* * *

 

Bulma followed the flashing dot, winding up the mountain at an excruciatingly slow pace. It was too thickly forested to speed through, not unless she wanted to end up wrapped around one of the trees, and she didn’t want to accidentally rush past the dragon ball she was seeking. It was a nice day, she had to admit, but so quiet and boring. She was here for something exciting to happen, for adventure—

\--and then the car slammed into something. Hard. The engine caved in on itself, she heard the metal screaming as she was screaming too, and the car was suddenly flipped onto its side. She hadn’t hit something. She hit _someone_.

She had a pistol on her, just in case, one that her dad hadn’t realized she had found in a back room and taken along. In a panic, she pulled it out and fired blindly. The boy yelled in pain and she instantly regretted it. Until she noticed that the bullet had bounced right off of him.

He sat on the ground, rubbing his head, frowning at her. He was small, couldn’t have been more than five or six, with wild black hair and—

Oh lord guardian above them, he had a tail. She screamed and fired again.

      “Owww!”

Of course, it might not be the saiyan. He looked a little young. But at the same time, she’d laughed in Vegeta’s face when he’d told her he was twenty one and a half. (He’d refused to talk to her for nearly an hour after that) They were /aliens/ after all. And that tail was unmistakable.

The boy ripped the car door off and pulled her from the seat.

This was it. She was going to die. And Vegeta would have the satisfaction of being right.

      “There, I saved you from the monster! What didja do to get eaten like that?”

The what now.

      “T-that’s not a monster, it’s a car!” A dead car, as it were. One that she wasn’t going to be driving away any time soon, thanks to the fact that she had run him over. And shot him twice. And he had nothing but a bruise or two to show for it. “But that doesn’t matter—I can’t believe this—“

He looked at her suspiciously. “You’re not a monster too, are you?”

      “What? No, of course not, I’m a human.”

      “Are you _sure?_ ”

Nope, this kid definitely wasn’t a saiyan. Not with the way he acted. But, maybe, what if it was an act? The gun wouldn’t do her much good, not against someone with his kind of strength and durability, but she held onto it anyway.

      “I’m very sure.”

      “Well you don’t look like any human I’ve ever seen!”

Or maybe he was just dropped on his head as a child.

      “What, you’ve never seen a girl before?” She meant it rhetorically; he confirmed that he had never indeed laid eyes on a girl. He circled her, holding a strange poll as a weapon.

      “So girls don’t have tails then.”

      “No, _humans_ don’t have tails.”

      “They do too, I have one!”

Bulma opened her mouth. She closed it again. Was this kid for real? With the amount of prideful dribble about saiyans she had put up with as a child while building forts and sandcastles and the like, she would have never thought one would deny being of their race. “But you’re from _space_.”

      “No I’m not!” he put his little hands on his hips, “I’ve lived here all my life!”

      “All your life,” that was cause for a pause, “Here, on this mountain?”

      “Yup! With my grandpa. Before he died. I live over there!” he gestured further up the path with a grin, “And he always told me if I ever met a girl, I should be nice to her.”

      “Well, he was a smart man,” Unlike some people she knew, “What’s your name, anyway?”

      “Oh, it’s Goku. What’s yours?”

      “Bulma,” she pointed to the front of her dress, that she had made herself, where her name had been appliqued on. A little vain, maybe, but she liked it. “Listen, stay right there for a sec, okay?”

      “Uh, sure.”

She bolted for the overturned car, finding her bag in the wreckage. A matching walkie talkie unit was hiding still inside it, and looked like it still worked, so she flipped the switch on.

      “Hey, Vegeta,” she whispered as loudly as she dared into the mic end, “I might have a situation here.”

Silence. Damn him.

      “Oh for fuck’s sake—“

      **< ”You’re so _vulgar_ ,”>** came the static filled drawl, **< ”And what are you on about?”>**

      “Woah, it talked! How did you do that! You’re not a witch, are you?”

      “Would you shush?” She looked at Goku. “I think I found your monkey friend.”

More silence, but this time a soft crackle that let her know that he was still on the other end.

      “Are you even listening to me—“

      **< ”I’LL BE RIGHT THERE DON’T MOVE DON’T TALK TO IT DON’T ENGAGE IT _DON’T DO ANYTHING--_ ”>**

Then the line went dead.

      “Huh.” She put it back in her bag and slung the strap over her shoulder. “How about you show me that house of yours?”

      “Okay!”

 

* * *

 

She was deep in negotiations with the kid over the dragon ball he had coincidentally in his possession, a memento from the grandfather he had mentioned before, when Vegeta literally burst onto the scene. And kicked the kid through the goddamn wall. Which pissed everyone off, but Goku seemed no worse for wear. _Saiyans_.

      “What was _that_ for!” the small monkey child wailed at him, and Vegeta probably would have tried to rip his head off if she didn’t step between them, livid in her own right.

She might not have figured out yet if the boy was truly friend or foe, but attacking him unprovoked like that was certainly a dick move.

      “What are you doing?” she shoved at his chest and he snarled back at her, “I’ve been trying to convince him to let us borrow the dragon ball he has; and you just have to come along to ruin it!”

      “He’s a monster who could have killed you!” he didn’t say it directly to her, instead weaving around her to growl at the boy who was dusting plaster and wood off himself, “And _you_ , you low class scum, what do you think you’re doing here?”

      “I live here! And that really hurt!” he frowned at them, giving them an uneasy glance, “Why are you two so mean?”

      “Hey, I’m not mean!” Bulma took that comment very seriously. How dare he lump her in with Vegeta and his attitude problem. “I am a perfectly well-mannered young lady!”

A derisive snort came from beside her. She resisted the urge to smack the smirk right off Vegeta’s dumb face. He was supposed to be helping, not making things worse, but could she really have expected anything better of him?

      “Well _I_ am,” as he spoke and staked close to the other saiyan, she had a fleeting thought that she really should put him on a leash, or at least teach him some scraps of decency, “And you, Kakarot, are not going to be allowed to roam this planet freely!”

      “Kaka-what?”

      “That’s his name,” Vegeta glowered, “Kakarot, a welp from the soldier ranks—“

      “No, my name is Goku—“

      “Don’t be ridiculous. I don’t care what human alias you’ve adopted, you can’t hide from /me/. I know what you are—What I don’t follow is why earth is still here. Are you just that incompetent, or did Frieza send you here with a different mission?”

      “Who?” That was a very good question, “But I’m human, just like you—“

      “Actually he’s an alien,” a weird-ass alien from way past Jupiter, “And I’m pretty sure you are too.”

      “You’re a bunch of liars.” He crossed his little arms and stared them down, tail swishing, “I’m /not/ whatever he is.”

      “You’re damn right you’re not,” Vegeta sneered at him, “It’s insulting enough that you’re one of the last saiyans in the universe; if you were anywhere near elite status, I’d kill you myself.”

Well, that certainly escalated quickly. And she was sure that death threats weren’t going to convince the kid to let them have the dragon ball. She wanted to scream at him; she remembered him being difficult when they were children, but she must have blocked out just how bad he really was. Then again, it had only been them and her parents. Maybe not letting him out of the house had been the key to keeping him from being too much of a jerk.

      “We are not killing anyone,” because for crying out loud, there really was no reason to go to such an extreme, “We just need that ball you have.”

Goku’s face scrunched up. “Why do you want my grandpa so bad anyway?”

      “I already told you, it’s not your grandfather, it’s a dragon ball. And we need it to make a wish. Can we please have it?”

      “I don’t know…”

She lifted the edge of her dress, making to show him a peak of her underwear. It had worked in the past after all. Vegeta choked from somewhere behind her. “Maybe I’ll even let you _touch._ ”

      “Why would I want to touch your dirty butt?”

      “It’s not dirty!”

      “Keep your clothes on, woman, I’ll just take the ball—“

      “No you won’t!”

And now she had just made things worse. Good job, Bulma. She hadn’t realized that she was going to have to play diplomat between two aliens who could probably snap her in half with their bare hands. She didn’t sign up for any of this shit.

      “Hold on, _hold on_ ,” Think fast girl, you can do this, “I have a better idea. One where no one dies and we don’t bring this poor house down around us. We’ll go together, alright? On an adventure! It’ll be fun!”

Vegeta looked personally offended. “You can’t be serious. We are _not_ taking that thing along.”

For the love of physics and quantum mechanics.

      “Okay!”

They both looked at the smaller saiayn, who was already gathering up his belongings, including the softly glowing sphere. “I’ll come with you!”

 

* * *

 

She had a bike in her capsule collection, but it only sat two, and only if the second was very small. Having to fly seemed to faze Vegeta far less than the fact that they were taking Goku along. He didn’t complain so much as sigh loudly and huff and outright refuse to acknowledge either of them. Fine, if that’s the way he wanted to be, then Goku would get to ride bitch instead.

Goku however was delighted at the speed of her bike, and even more fascinated with Vegeta zipping along beside them. She’d gotten used to his gravity defying antics, but there was something different now about how he moved. She couldn’t quite place her finger on it. Though, in reality, they had both changed. And it was a shame that time had done that, because she would have loved to go back to those simpler days. She had a feeling there was a lot he still wasn’t telling her.

      “Teach me how to fly!”

      “No,” Vegeta snapped back.

      “Aww, why not? It looks like fun!”

      “Learn it on your own time!” She could feel the hostility boiling in the air about them. She’d be lucky if they found another dragon ball before Vegeta killed the kid riding with them. It wouldn’t be a very auspicious start to their journey.

      “Both of you, shut it.” _Boys_. They might just be more trouble than they were worth. “Let’s see… the next one is about… 200 miles straight ahead, give or take a few minor recalculations.”

      “Wonderful,” she almost doesn’t catch his sarcastic comment over the rumble of the bike, “200 miles with this /ingrate/ as company.”

She’d smack him if he wasn’t just out of reach.

 

* * *

 

They stop for lunch, of a sort, though she really didn’t bring along enough food for _two_ saiyans. She leaves them bickering at each other to find a secluded spot to relieve herself. Goku asked something along the lines of why she couldn’t just piss over there, and Vegeta did her screaming for her. The calls of barbarian, uneducated slime, and so help him _he would cull him right then and there_ were still ringing in her ears. She was so preoccupied with her internal grumblings over her ridiculous traveling companions that she didn’t notice the dinosaur swooping in on her until it was much too late.

She screamed. She screamed like her life depended on it, because it probably did. The pterosaur shrieked back and caught her in its talloned feet. Despite all her yelling and name calling, the thing didn’t seem sapient, and rose to the air with a beat of its massive wings. This was it. She was going to die before she ever got a boyfriend. She was going to die a virgin, and that was the saddest part of all.

The pterosaur started to fly away, but as she was contemplating her own mortality, it suddenly stopped midair as if by some invisible force.

      “Drop her,” Vegeta had one hand on the thing’s beak full of razor sharp teeth, effectively holding it in place, “Drop her _now._ ”

      “Don’t drop me!” she squealed. The ground was awfully far away now, and she’d rather not be a pretty stain on it. “Let me down gently!”

The dinosaur snapped at him. So he punched it, snapping it’s neck with one blow. In its death throws it let her go and she screamed for all her worth again, until Goku caught her as he stood on the strange pole he’d brought with him. She was twice as tall as him and easily out weighted him, and he lifted her like it was nothing, grinning the whole time. She remembered that he was supposed to have wiped out all life on her world and her blood turned cold. And once upon a time there had been a whole _planet_ of people like this.

They came back to earth and he set her down, all the while going on about how awesome it was that Vegeta was so strong while the other saiyan looked down on him, floating just out of reach. He was probably doing it on purpose too. The still warm carcass of the pterosaur was now blocking half the road.

She felt bad for it in a way; it hadn’t known any better, it was just trying to survive and she had been an easy target. Now it was dead. At least it had been quick.

      “We should eat it!”

A horrified look crossed her face, “You want to _what?_ ”

      “Eat it!” Goku repeated, “It’s big enough for all of us!”

      “That’s the smartest thing that’s come out of your mouth yet,” Vegeta agreed. She placed her head in her hands and groaned.

      “I can’t believe you two, that’s disgusting!”

      “I’ve seen you eat meat before.”

      “Yeah, meat that’s been carefully raised and packaged, like we do in civilized societies,” she argued, “I am not eating something we just found out in the wild—much less something that tried to eat me first!”

Vegeta shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

If the very idea of eating a random dino had turned her off meat for a while, the sight of them butchering the beast made her want to swear it off entirely. She might just give up food in general for a while. Neither of them seemed to pay any heed to the amount of blood and gore they were getting all over the grass, all over themselves. She moved as far from them as she dared and set up the capsule house she had with her.

      “I’m becoming a vegetarian,” she announced once they had set up their impromptu cookout. Not even the familiar smell of roasted steaks could dispel the churning in her stomach. “And it’s all your fault.”

      “Whatever you say, woman.”

      “Are you sure you don’t want some?” Goku asked with a touch of concern, “It’s really good!”

      “No, thank you.”

A vegetarian until the end of her days.

 

* * *

 

Vegeta had to drag Goku kicking and screaming inside, as it turned out the kid had literally been raised in the mountains and was convinced that modern technology was magic, and in turn that Bulma was a witch. Which was offensive, because she was obviously a lovely young lady, not a wizened old crone spinning spells and stealing souls. It wasn’t until after he physically dragged him in by the tail that she realized how filthy the smaller saiyan was—on top of the mess both of them had made of themselves thanks to the pterosaur.

      “Goku, you need a bath.” Her nose scrunched up, “Immediately. With like, a gallon of soap.”

      “What’s soap?”

She suddenly had a flashback to years before, having the same conversation with another boy that had fallen from the heavens. Vegeta caught her eye and gave her a look that said ‘don’t you dare’. She decided to be nice and not mention it.

      “It’s to get you clean, silly. Haven’t you ever taken a bath before? Wait, don’t answer that, just get in the tub. Vegeta—“

      “I am not touching him,” he sneered, “So don’t you even think about it.”

She gave him her best glare, but he stood his ground, glowering back. Actually, he looked pretty intimidating while covered in the dark stains of dino blood. Maybe she should just throw Goku in the tub herself and be done with it. That was probably a good idea. Yeah. She could yell at Vegeta later when he didn’t look like he wanted to go out and kill a man.

It’s funny, she was never scared of him when they were children. He had been brash, full of himself, pissy and possessing of a temper that had rivaled her own; but he wasn’t scary. She never felt unsafe with him around. Now at the drop of anything he could be _terrifying_. There was just something… unnerving about him now. And to be fair, he hadn’t ever killed something in front of her before. Threatened, maybe, without true intent. (Because as much as he had said otherwise, he really did like the cats, even if they got fur all over him) But it had taken one whole hit to end that dinosaur’s life. As if it was nothing to him to do so.

      “Stop staring,” he huffed, “I’ll take a shower soon as you’re done with the brat.”

As if she had really been that worried about blood getting on the floor.

 

* * *

 

She also hadn’t remembered that there was but one bed in the house she had brought along. Vegeta glowered at her, but commandeered the couch, leaving her to throw blankets on the floor for Goku.

      “Why can’t we sleep together?”

      “Because, no. Just no. I’m too old for you.” She meant it as a joke, but then it dawned on her, “Hold on, how old are you anyways?”

He paused and counted on his fingers, “Um, twelve, I think. I never was much good with numbers.”

      “But you look like you’re six! How does that even work!”

      “Saiyan genetics,” came the response from the other room, “We stay in our prime longer, to maximize fighting time.”

      “Is that why you’re so short?”

      “You shut the hell up, woman!” a couch cushion came flying through the doorway, “I’m not done growing yet!”

      “Whatever you say,” but she wasn’t so sure, “See you in the morning, jerk.”

 

* * *

 

If she thought that the next day would be calmer, she was dead wrong.

First, there was Goku waking her up at the ass crack of dawn. Because apparently saiyans universally had no idea what it was to sleep till a reasonable time. Vegeta at least had the decency to let her sleep, and remembered enough from his last visit on earth to get the coffee brewing while she whined and stumbled about while half awake. There wasn’t a rush to do anything now, not when they had found the one ‘threat’ that Vegeta had been so preoccupied with, so she didn’t see why she had to be up before ten. It was just ridiculous.

      “This water is bitter,” Goku complained, pushing the cup away. Why he even had a cup of coffee was beyond her. It was probably Vegeta’s doing.  
  
      “That’s because it’s not water,” she did math in her head while she chased the eggs on her plate. They were already running low on essentials. They’d have to find a town and restock, or they wouldn’t last the week. Good thing she had a credit card that had no limit. “It’s coffee.”

      “It’s gross.”

      “He’s not wrong,” Vegeta remarked off handedly, “Don’t give me that look. It’s brown sludge that you humans use for a quick high.”

      “I prefer the term, ‘short term focus’.” She takes another sip, “Fine, more for me anyway.”

Goku is impatiently running around outside by the time she has her act together. They might be on the road, but that’s no excuse not to look good when leaving the house.

However the sounds of talking and commotion from just past the door make her sigh. What was it this time?

      “He’s found some sort of creature,” Vegeta sounds unimpressed, “With a shell and flippers.”

      “What?” she does open the door at that, to find the kid talking to an enormous old sea turtle. Who’s rather far from home, considering the beach is a hike from where they’re situated. The turtle bobs its head at her.

      “Hello, hello!” he greets, “I, I was wondering, if you’d be so kind, as to spare me some salt water?”

      “Salt… water?” it’s an odd request, but she does have water, and salt in one of the cabinets, “Uh, sure, give me a second—“

      “He said he got lost,” Goku explains when she comes back with the bucket of cool and salty water, which the turtle dives into drinking right away, “And he can’t find his way back to the ocean! So I’m going to help him there.”

      “We are not helping that… thing,” Vegeta hisses, and she’s inclined to agree with him. They can’t be stopping to help every stray animal or they’ll never get done before she has to go to grad school.

      “Aw, c’mon! We can’t just leave him here!”

      “Don’t be ridiculous, it’s made it this far—“

      “Well, _I’m_ taking him to the ocean,” Goku declares, and lifts the turtle up, starting off down the road with his cargo. She looked to Vegeta for a reaction, who only grumbled and threw his hands in the air, muttering about bleeding hearts and low bred fools. She shrugged and let him go.

But by the time a half hour had passed, she begun to feel guilty. The next dragon ball was in the general direction of the nearest shore, so there really was no reason they couldn’t have lead the poor turtle there. So she cap’d the house, pulled out her bike instead, and yelled at Vegeta when he tried to tell her ‘the folly of her actions’ like the pretentious dick he was.

      “I’ll leave you behind!” she threatened, and when his sulking form didn’t move, she did just that. She grinned when not thirty seconds down the road he was flying alongside her once again. He was so predictable.

It didn’t take them long to catch up with Goku, who couldn’t go very fast because of the turtle he was carrying, but he was pleased to see them. So was the turtle, who informed them all that his name was indeed just ‘Turtle’, which rather boring. His parents must not have had an imagination. Did sea turtles even live with their parents? Would it be too rude to ask? The one time she had tried to ask Vegeta he’d flown off the handle and hadn’t talked to her for a whole day. Well, better not to risk it.

It was an easy ride, if a bit slow. Before too long the trees began to thin and break away, leading into soft rolling dunes spotted with sea grasses. She had to stop her bike too—lest she get sand all up in the engine. And it wasn’t as though it was built for that kind of terrain, as that was what her poor jeep had been for. The wind whipped through her hair, kicking brine and the fragments of rock and shell and goodness knows what else into it, stinging her eyes and skin. The tang on the air and the shifting sands beneath her feet brought back so many memories of trips to the beach. Just last summer, with her mother, but also the time many years before that, with a stubborn little boy who was hell bent on not having any kind of fun.

      “Hey, Vegeta,” she called out to where he hovered as she kicked her shoes off. Goku was already getting Turtle safely back in the ocean where he belonged. “Remember the last time we went to the beach?” 

A face of disgust covers his features, “I am /not/ helping you with another ridiculous sand castle.”  
  
She’s laughing at him then, and jumping into the surf. Goku is trying to drink the water as if it’s a lake or a spring back on the mountain. It doesn’t end well for him at all. She eventually convinces Vegeta to at least come down out of the air and wait with them, as apparently Turtle has said something about a gift for helping him back home, and with the way that creature moved, they could be here a while. She then can’t resist splashing as much water as she can in his direction. He dodges, gives her a look of outrage, and then it’s _on_. Of course she’s like a piece of paper to him, and all her shrieking doesn’t keep him from throwing her into the incoming waves. So her wounded dignity calls on

Goku instead, who approaches the task with enthusiasm, and then she has two saiyans trying to drown each other before the turtle comes back.  
He has the weirdest old man she has ever seen on his back. Bald, but with a beard nearly a foot long, dressed in cheesy touristy beach clothes and wearing what looked to be a turtle shell on his back.

      “Hello!” he called out, jumping down from Turtle’s back, “So you’re the bunch who helped my Turtle out while he was in a pickle!”

      “There, him, mostly,” Turtle waved a flipper at Goku, “Though she did get me some salt water.”  
Who did what is suddenly very irrelevant when she catches sight of the object that the old man is wearing around his neck. She can hardly believe their luck.

      “A dragon ball!” she shouts in delight, “Goku, he has a dragon ball!”

      “A what now?”

      “That thing, on your lanyard, it’s a dragon ball! We’re looking for them!”

      “Oh, this old thing?” the man took it off, the dragon ball catching the evening sun and glimmering with its rays, “It washed up on my island years ago. Just a pretty trinket. Is it worth that much to you?”

      “Yes, please! Can we have it?”

      “I don’t know,” it was hard to read him with those sunglasses, “Hmm…”

It was do or die at this point. She couldn’t let that dragon ball slip from her hands, not when it was so close, not when it had been delivered to her on a proverbial silver platter. She threw her best sultry face on and tugged at the hem of her skirt.

      “I _suppose_ I could always give you a peak…”

Goku, as per usual didn’t follow the conversation. Vegeta started shrieking in protest. The old man sputtered, but she had pegged him correctly; filthy minded like most men. She knew how to use her charms to her advantage. Her dress flipped up.

She got her dragon ball. It was worth the scandalized look on Vegeta’s face.

Goku got a funny looking cloud, as the Turtle Hermit as he called himself, insisted that he get something better than a happened upon piece of junk. Apparently one could only ride if they were pure of heart; Bulma fell through the fluffy thing immediately, while it accepted Goku with ease. Vegeta refused to even go near it. Not that he needed it, with his ability to fly through the air as if the laws of science and gravity didn’t apply to him. Though after the hermit and his trusty turtle where sailing out of sight, she realized that with this new development not even her bike would be able to keep up with them. Not with the way the Nimbus zoomed to and fro.

      “I have the radar,” she reminded them primly, “So don’t even _think_ about running off and leaving a poor girl like me defenseless!”

      “Of course not,” Vegeta drawled, “You’re just a weak little human after all.”

Sometimes she really wanted to punch him.


	5. Clash

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes a side quest actually progresses the plot.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AFTER SO VERY LONG, A NEW CHAPTER ARRIVES

Vegeta was in hell.

He had thought life under Frieza’s thumb had been the pinnacle of suffering. No, it was indeed being on earth, traveling with an idiot girl and the most defective saiyan he had ever met. His brother had more sense that this low class dribble. This had to all be a cruel joke.

And he was very sick of being the punchline to that joke.

It was wearing thin on what little patience he had scrounged together for this whole endeavor. There had better be a real live dragon and a miracle or five at the end of this path, or so help him, he was going to level a few cities to make himself feel better. Maybe he should anyway. Show that brat and the woman just _what_  he was capable of; maybe then Bulma would stop looking at him with swirls of stars in her eyes, and Kakarot would show him the appropriate amount of respect. Yes, that was a good plan. The next settlement they happened across would be ash beneath his fingers—

Except when they got to it, the place was a tiny, sad ghost town, barely worth the effort of stopping at. What a disappointment. But the radar pinged loudly as the passed through the gates, so he bore it. Just another trial on the path to returning home.

“Hello?” the woman called out; if this was a trap, an ambush, she would have been as good as dead. At least he’s here to make sure the fool didn’t get herself into too much trouble. Kakarot approached a door and pounded on its front until it opened with an axe swinging at his head. The primitive weapon was dull, clearly not used for war or cleaving flesh, and stood no match against saiyan physiology. The whole debacle however, and the way the humans squealed in fear, was nothing short of hilarious. Bulma glared at him.

“We’re so sorry!” an elderly woman crowed, “We thought you were the terrible monster Oolong, here to steal another one of our daughters!”

“What’s an Oolong?” Kakarot asked, as if it hadn’t literally already been explained to him. It was a monster. Stealing daughters. For Ausa’s sake—

“A terrible demon!” another man continued, “He comes in a different form each time, so you can see how we were confused.”

“That’s too bad,” Bulma replied, and it was hard to tell if she was sincere or not. She’d always been a crafty one, “But I have a question; we’re looking for something, a dragon ball, it looks like this…”

She pulled one of the precious objects out of her bag for the townsfolk to gaze upon. They were oddly wondrous things, glowing with their own energy, and even humming faintly, though he was sure that the humans with their subpar hearing didn’t pick up on it. There was something… entrancing about them.

“Oh, I have one of those,” someone commented, “It’s been in my family for generations.”

“Fantastic!” she was excited, though it never seemed to take much to get her that way. If anyone should be pleased at the development, it should be him, not her. It was his wish on the line after all. “I have an idea; if we get rid of this Oolong thing, will you let us have your dragon ball?”

Oh. Oh, no. Oh _hell_  no.

“I don’t see why not,” the woman sounded skeptical, “But are you sure you can do that?”

“No problem! Goku and Vegeta here are super strong!”

She was beaming. He made to wipe the smile right off her face.

“I never agreed to help anyone,” he bit out. How dare she offer him up, like he was some tool or beast of burden to be lent out on a whim. He was no one’s toy. “I’ll just take the dragon ball—“

“You will do no such thing!” the heat rose in her voice, “We are _not_  a bunch of thugs!”

She was so difficult. They were wasting time, time that could be spent tracking down the next ball. And was it really their duty to help these pathetic people who couldn’t even save themselves? The strong devoured the weak. That was the way of the universe.

Yet she held him with those fierce eyes and for some reason he relented.

“The demon should be coming later,” the man of the house explained. He clutched a girl to him as if she might fade away otherwise, “He wants to take my daughter as his bride.”

Bulma starts grinning, “I have an idea.”

He didn’t like the sound of that.

 

* * *

 

“Why do I have to wear it?” Kakarot complained, shifting in the dress and scarf wrapped about his head. He looked absolutely ridiculous. It would have been funny if the plan was more sound.

“Because it’s too small for Vegeta or I,” Bulma explained. She adjusted the costume as the saiyan frowned at her, “This will work, trust me.”

“Only an idiot would fall for a ruse such as that,” Then again, he seems to be inundated with fools and bleeding hearts, “You couldn’t think of anything better?”

“I could always put you in a dress anyway.”

“You wouldn’t _dare_.”

She would, though. She’d try at least. She wouldn’t survive a day off world.

But they shove Kakarot outside once the call goes up that their fierce and terrifying demon has returned. Considering the beast is tall and horned, he can see how it looks frightening; but appearances can mean little. Some of the deadliest things in the universe came in the smallest and most unassuming packages. Bulma keeps an eye on the situation from the window while he pretends to be disinterested in the entire charade. They had better at least get the dragon ball out of this.

The humans can’t hear the conversation taking place outside because of their lowly hearing abilities, but he catches every word. He has his suspicions about the ‘demon’ when he transforms into a humanoid form, but before he can voice a theory, Bulma and her flaring hormones are halfway out the door. She’s luststruck and making to offer herself up as tribute before he’s roughly hauling her back inside, because that idiot of a saiyan has broken his cover in the most unseemly of ways. Leave it to him to just start pissing on a tree in the middle of the square. The being transforms again into another monster.

“I’ve changed my mind,” Bulma states quickly, backpedaling into him, and he can’t believe that they’ve managed to live this long as a species.

Then they’re making to fight and finally something exciting might be about to happen.

“Shouldn’t you help him?”

“Why?” he sneers. It’s not his place to lend a hand. If Kakarot is going to prove that he’s not entirely useless, this would be the time. “I want to see how this plays out.”

“Then you don’t care if he gets hurt?”

“No.”

She throws her hands up. Kakarot chases the monster out of town. All’s well that ends well.

It would be, if that was the end of it— but no, they haven’t actually defeated the monster, and the humans are still milling about while entrapped in fear.  And the beast keeps _coming back_. A different form each time, disappearing after a spell only to return with a vengeance. Kakarot is playing with them, treating it like a giant game instead of actually getting anything done. If he wasn't so eager to get on with the hunt, he might have let it continue, but they've already wasted enough time in the backwater town dealing with problems that weren't there own.

"This charade has gone on long enough," Vegeta growls and steps onto the scene, pushing Kakarot to the side despite his protests, "Where are you keeping the other girls?"

The creature, a shapeshifter of some sort currently in the form of a mechanized humanoid, leers over him in an attempt to be intimidating. It's a laughable effort.

"I ain't telling," they claim defiantly, "And no band of pipsqueaks is gonna stop me!"

Vegeta throws the monster clear over the town wall.

"Don't you think that was a little exsessive?" Bulma comments. The other townsfolk are predictablly shocked and awed. He scoffs at the idea.

"It got the job done." He mutters, but a great cloven animal comes charging in at them. It's easy to step out of its rageful path, and trip them as they run by. Kakarot gleefully pins them down. It's not long until his theory comes true; there's a time limit on their power to change forms, hence the constant running to and from sight, and the varity of shifts. An interesting trick, even if their base form is unimpressive.

"So this is what you really look like!" The other saiyan exclaims, keeping a tight hold on the diminutive pig child even as he struggles to get away. "You sure do look weird."

"Well that's rude," Oolong huffs, "I don't come into your house and insult your looks, do I?"

"I don't think you get to comment on social graces when you've been kiddnaping people," Bulma snaps back, "Now, tell everyone you're sorry, or we're going to see just how far Goku can throw you."

The pig goes very quiet very fast.

 

* * *

 

They find the missing daughters of the town-- living very comfortably in Oolong's estate, unharmed and reluctant to leave the luxury they have to return home. In a shocking twist of events, they uncover he's really just a leecherous teenager with ideas about gradure and a home of attractive mates to do his bidding. It wasn't long before Oolong had seemingly discovered that things didn't work that way. Hence, his repeated trips to find a 'perfect' wife. At the end of the day, everything resolved itself. The humans had thier children back, and happily traded their dragon ball for their services in taking the 'monster' down. Oolong was under various threats never to repeat his disturbing actions.

Yet none of this explained why he was suddenly traveling with them.

"I want to know that too," Oolong whines, "Why do I have to come along?"

"Because that shapeshifting of yours might be useful in a pinch," Bulma hums, and he hates the fact that she has a point, "And I feel better knowing you're not off doing god knows what in the world."

Still, with the four of them crammed into a tiny boat to travel up the river, he had to wonder how good of an idea it really was. He wasn't keen on adding more people to their little group-- not when so much was riding on finding the damn balls. The more unknown variables they had, the more ways things could go wrong, and the more he wanted to strangle them all.

The sooner it was all over, the better.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi everyone!! tldr on why it took so long to update; my health is a garbage fire, I was stuck on how to wrap up this chapter, aaaand it's been long enough that I basically hate everything I've written for this fic. :') 
> 
> but so much is already done that I'll keep posting it anyway, and hopefully as I get to sections I haven't written, quality will improve. thanks to everyone who's stuck with me through my roller coaster of an irl scene! it's been rough but I hope y'all enjoy the coming content!!


	6. The Thrill

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things get real hot real fast.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi pls take the hot garbage I'm dumping on all of you

  
Somewhere along the way, Bulma lost her case of capsules.

She screamed. She cried. She tried to convince Vegeta to go look in the river for them. He pointedly refused, citing something intelligent about currents and water depths and the fact that it was too damn cold to go diving in it. Goku did look but couldn’t find anything. Oolong whined loudly about the whole situation and his own captivity. But not for too long, because Vegeta’s hard stare was enough to shut anyone up. Anyone but her, that is.

So they had to travel on foot. It was ridiculous, especially once they hit the western desert that stood between them and Mount Frypan. She wasn’t built for such a long, hard trek. It was probably the only thing her and that damn pig had in common. Of course the stupid aliens thought that their perfectly valid complaints where silly, and pointed out that they had even been so gracious to walk alongside them, when they could have been flying away ahead.

“ _Some_  of us are _normal!_ ” she snaps, too hot and too tired to deal with either of their bullshit, “I’m done, I can’t go any further.”

Vegeta makes fun of her as she crawls into the shade of a rock formation, and she would have loved a nice bucket of ice to dump onto his dumb head. They’d see who would be laughing then.

“I can’t do this,” she laments to no one in particular, “I need a bath and a bed and clothes that aren’t covered in sand and—“

Somewhere, mid rant, she must have dozed off, because she wakes up again to Vegeta laughing and Goku getting kicked around by possibly the most attractive man she’s ever seen. He has this rugged look about him, long wind blow hair, and goodness, if he ever stopped talking it would be a crime. She should probably be concerned that he’s beating up a saiyan as though it were nothing; but he was just so _tall_.

“Who is that?” She asks sleepily, dreamily, hoping in fact that it’s not a dream and that he’s very real, because that would just be sad otherwise. The man catches sight of her. He goes shock still.

“Y-you win this time!” He stammers out, rapidly backing away. A little cat-like thing follows alongside him. “W-we’ll be b-back!”

And then he’s gone, retreating on an ancient model of one-person hover transport, leaving her a little put out but no less enamored. “He seemed nice.”

“That was a bandit!” Oolong exclaims, and she catches him pocketing something that looked suspiciously like a capsule. “He was gonna _kill_  us!”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Vegeta rolls his eyes, “I would have stopped him long before that happened.”

“I didn’t see you helping Goku!”

“Oh yes, like you helped him, cowering behind that rock?” he crosses his arms and looks down at Oolong, who squirms under his harsh gaze, “It was Kakarot’s fight anyway. No need for me to get involved in petty squabbles.”

Oolong grumbles, but backs off. It occurs to her that he hasn’t seen Vegeta in action to know what he’s really capable of.

“What he really strong enough to give Goku a hard time?” If anything, that only makes the mysterious stranger all that more alluring. A hunk who could take down a saiyan; what a catch that would be.

“No, he was holding back. The idiot can’t fight on an empty stomach apparently.”

Goku chose that moment to interrupt and complain loudly that he was /starving/ and could they /please/ find some food? Except they were in a freaking desert and with her capsule house gone, her supplies where mostly gone too. How the hell was she supposed to support two saiyans out in a wasteland—

“Oolong,” she held out her hand, “Give me that cap.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about—“

“Give it to her." Comes Vegeta’s growl, and he produces the goods at lightning speed.

A click, a toss, a pop, and a two story mobile home explodes out of compressed atoms and complicated quantum mechanics. Not bad, really.

“You’ve been holding out on us!”

“I was saving it for a special occasion!” Oolong shot back, sighing heavily as he pulled the door open. “I don’t even know if there’s enough room for all of us.”

There was enough room to accommodate them, though things got a little cozy with four of them. It turned out that their new pink companion was a decent enough cook, even if both Goku and Vegeta proceeded to eat him out of house and home. It served him right though, for hiding this resource when they could have been traveling this godforsaken desert in a real vehicle, instead of trudging over dunes on foot and getting filthy. Speaking of which—

“You have a bathroom, don’t you?”

“Yeah, over there,” Oolong took a moment to point down a hallway while he pulled a whole roast chicken out of the oven. She had a feeling she wasn’t going to see a single bite of it.

“You have any clothes I could borrow?” She called back, frowning and the incredibly tiny bathroom. Only enough room to shower, it seemed. How barbaric. “I lost everything when my case fell in the river."

“Uh, I guess I do? No PJs in your size though, unless you can shrink on demand.”

She scrubbed at her face. This was quickly becoming less of an adventure and more of a brutal trial. That jerk of a prince had better be damn grateful she was helping him wish back his planet and race of over-the-top aliens. The things she did for friends.

“You better not try to peep on me!”

“What do you take me for—ow!”

She couldn’t help but grin. Vegeta was good for some things at least.

 

* * *

 

Bulma ends up sleeping in her clothes, because there’s really nothing else to be done. As soon as they find a decent town she is buying an entire wardrobe and sewing the caps into the lining of her coat. But they’re filthy and gross and she feels the need to let the whole world know. If she's going to suffer, they can all suffer with her.

“There _might_  be something that fits you in the top drawer,” Oolong is emptying the fridge of the last dregs of food, “But it might not be to your tastes—“

“Why didn’t you say so earlier?” she dashes back up the steps and tears the drawer open. Her joy dissipates as soon as she sees what’s inside.

Women’s lingerie. A huge collection of it. She really shouldn’t be surprised, considering what a massive pervert the damn pig was, but it’s disappointing. And yet, she really doesn’t want to wear the same outfit for the third day in a row. The only thing that’s remotely modest is the bunny getup, black leotard with fishnets and matching ears. She curses as she pulls the whole thing on.

Actually, she doesn’t look half bad in it. But that doesn’t mean that she can’t act as though she’s personally offended by the idea that Oolong has stashes of sexy costumes in his camper. So she heads back downstairs, head held high, heels clicking on the steps. She’ll just have to put on a show.

“Is this your idea of a joke?” She declares, and is rewarded with Vegeta choking on whatever he was drinking. Yup, she still knows how to work a room.

“I said you wouldn’t like it!”

“Whatever, it’ll do,” She dismisses him with a wave, and as per usual, Goku has no idea what the implications of all this are. “Just drive the damn van.”

“Why do I have to?”

“Because she said so,” Vegeta has recovered enough to snarl out threats. She must be losing her touch. “So just do it.”

She settles in for the ride between her two aliens and pulls out a makeup compact. That at least survived to travel with her. A girl had to look her best after all, especially just in case that hot bandit stopped by. It was a big desert. It could happen.

“Do you think we’ll see him again?” she muses as she does her lips.

“Who?”

“That handsome guy!”

Vegeta ‘tch’s, Goku shrugs, and she’s left to her own daydreams until Oolong starts screaming bloody murder.

“He’s back!”

“He is?” she squeals in delight, “He really came?”

It must be for her. Why else would he have chased them this far, if not for a beautiful woman such as herself?

But then the missile hits the van and she starts to reconsider once her head hits the table. That fucking _hurt_. Then an arm is against her waist, lifting her up as if she was nothing at all, setting her upright on unsteady feet.

“I’ll kill him,” Vegeta vows, and dazed as she is, she has the forethought to fist a hand in his battle suit to keep him from doing just that. If he kills the idiot with a rocket launcher then she can’t date him. And someone will probably try to arrest him for murder and that won’t end will for anyone involved.

“Hand over the dragon balls!” The man yells at them, brandishing another gun. Goku is outside making faces at him. How did he find out about the balls anyway?

“Nuh-uh!” Goku sticks out his tounge, “There’s no way we’re giving them to someone like you!”

“You little shit,” he hands the gun off to his floating cat friend, “You’re in for a world of hurt!”

“I was hungry yesterday! But now I’ve had breakfast!”

And then they’re fighting, trading blows almost faster than she can track. Whirling left, then right, then back again, blocking some and dodging others. It’s all giving her a headache.

“Sit down, you stupid girl,” Vegeta pries her off of him, “You probably have a concussion.”

“ ’M not stupid,” she protests, “I’m a _genius_.”

“A genius with a head injury.”

Well, that was the truth. So she does as she’s told just this once. “Don’t actually kill anyone!”

They both watch however as Goku gets one good right hook in. And knocks out one of the other guy’s teeth. Oh goodness, that had to hurt. The bandit shrieks in pain, but mostly in rage, howling about his manly face. It really is a shame. He does have a nice face. Then for the second time in twenty four hours’ time, the hot guy is running off again, and she finds herself pouting.

“If he keeps chasing off all the attractive people off, I’m never going to get a date!”

“You must have hit your head harder than I thought.”

“The van is totaled,” Oolong steps in to inform them, “Looks like it’s back to walking.”

She groans and goes to stand, but then the whole world gets dizzy and slides into a too bright swirl of color and if it wasn’t for a saiyan scooping her up, she would have been on the floor once more. He grumbles at her and shifts her into his arms bridal style. She’d thank him if she didn’t think she was going to throw up.

“Then let’s get moving,” he declares, “That brat is persistent if nothing else.”

 

* * *

 

The bandit does come back, and she convinces Vegeta to put her down for his arrival. She can’t be seen in another man’s arms after all. Though it doesn’t seem to matter much as he introduces himself as Yamcha, throws a new capsule car their way, and apologies profusely before speeding off yet again.

“Well, that just happened.” But it’s better than walking at least. Especially on the sand in heels. She might not have thought that one through all the way. She’s still a little wobbly as she climbs into the backseat with Vegeta. Goku hops in shotgun and they force Oolong to drive, because she’s really in no shape to herself, and she’s not even sure if Vegeta can.

“How’d you fly your spaceship, anyway?” she asks idly and he shrugs.

“I didn’t. It’s an automated process.”

“That’s boring. It’d be more fun to take the helm, y’know? Sail across the stars and all that.”

“You have such a romanticized vision of space,” he shifts beside her, “It’s mostly dark, cold, and lifeless. Nothing all that entertaining about an endless void.”

“Still, I think I’d like to see it first hand." What could compare with reaching the heavens? Surpassing mortal bonds of life on earth and reaching for something greater? Yes, it might not seem that special to someone who’s probably been to a dozen different solar systems, but she can’t help but crave a piece of that wonder and mystery. Maybe when this is all over she should start work on building her own spaceship. Come visit him on his silly planet that he wanted back so badly. See new worlds and experience new thrills. Maybe they could even go together. It sounded nice.

Somewhere along the way they left the desert wasteland for green tropical forests instead, but instead of getting cooler, the heat only intensified. She checked the radar.

“We’re heading north, so why is it getting _hotter?_ ”

“It’s Mount Frypan,” Oolong explains, “It’s covered in a wildfire so intense that the heat can be felt for miles all around.”

“That is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard,” Vegeta scoffs, “It can’t actually be on fire—“

Then they rounded a curve and there it was, rising majestic and engulfed in flames that licked the very sky above it. That shut the prince up for sure.

“So the rumors weren’t exaggerating,” She’s suddenly a little glad for her clothes that show off a bit of skin, because it lessens her chance of passing out from heatstroke. But she also feels as though she’s going to get filthy and sticky way too fast, and there’s not a piece of civilization in sight. Oolong stops the car.

“I am not getting any closer,” he scrambles out of the driver’s seat, “You guys have fun with the Ox King, I don’t want any part of it!”

“Who now?”

“The Ox King!” he waves his arms frantically, “Don’t tell me you haven’t heard of him either!”

“Just spit it out already!”

“Fine, fine! It’s his mountain, he guards it. He’s supposed to be this terrifying guy who kills anyone who gets too close! And I’m not too keen on finding out first hand!”

“Don’t be an idiot,” Vegeta grabs him by the collar before he can bolt, “You’re our guide, I’ll make sure the only hand you’ll die by is mine.”

What lovely words of encouragement.

“So he’s up in the castle?” Goku inquires, “How do we get past the fire then?”

“The Ox King isn’t in the castle, he’s at the base of the mountain. The fires just started one day and even he can’t get past them.”

“You sure know a lot about this stuff.”

Oolong shrugs. “It’s just what they had in the textbooks at school.”

She clicks the radar and studies the screen. “Well, the sixth dragon ball is definitely up there. Any ideas, boys?”

“One of us could fly up there.”

“Oh! Yeah!” Goku grins, “Let me get my Nimbus!”

And in a flash of a gold little cloud he’s gone, leaving them to wait in the sad ruins at the base of the mountain. It looks as though it hasn’t seen use from people in very long time, which she can’t entirely blame the residents for jumping ship. It’s not exactly prime real estate with the fire and rumors of a vicious demon king.

She has to shield her eyes from the bright light of the fires that’s blinding even at midday. It looks for a moment as though he’ll be successful, but the heat must prove too much, because as soon as he’s diving down on his cloud he swings back up again. Then a huge axe comes barreling past them and demolishes the side of a house. She screams louder than she ever has before. Before them is a bear of a man, dressed in old fashioned clothes and yelling at them, that they’ll never have his treasure so long as he’s here to defend it. It can’t be anyone other than the Ox King himself.

Vegeta throws him a good fifty feet.

“What’s goin’ on?” Goku’s innocent voice reaches them as he zooms back down to their level, “And who was that?”

“T-the Ox King!” Oolong is still screaming. At least she had stopped. “And your stupid friend is going to get us all killed!”

Vegeta snarls. Personally, she’s hoping that he didn’t just kill the other guy with that throw. She’s beginning to wonder if there’s anything on this green earth that could even hold a candle to Vegeta’s power. And she has a feeling she hasn’t even seen the limits of it. It’s a mildly concerning thought.

The Ox King seems to be in one piece though, groaning as he pulls himself out of the wreckage of the buildings his impromptu flight has destroyed. His whole demeanor changes however, going from gruff and enraged to… excited?

“You!” he clamors to Goku, “Where did you get that cloud?!”

“Oh, this? The Turtle Hermit gave it to me!”

“Y-you don’t mean _Master Roshi_ , the Turtle Hermit?!”

Now she’s lost.

“We know where he lives, right?” Goku turns to her, and she shrugs.

“Off the coast I assume—“

The Ox King is nearly crying in joy. All of these aggressors having sudden changes of heart is giving her emotional whiplash. One moment her life is flashing before her eyes, and the next they’re being hailed as saviors. At least the other two are about as dumbfounded as she it.

“Please, I need you to go to him!” the now not as scary Ox King begs, “He has the Bashou fan, and only it’s power can wipe out these terrible flames!”

“A fan,” Vegeta seems unconvinced and unimpressed, “A magic fan.”

“Sure! Oh, wait,” Goku pauses to take his four star ball out from the little bag he kept it in, holding it up high for all to see, “We’re looking for another one of these. We think it’s in your castle. If I get the fan, can we have it?”

“Oh, I’ve seen one of those! Of course you can have it.”

Well, that wasn’t so hard. And it could have gone a lot worse too.

“Wait, wait, before you go,” the Ox King continues, “I have another request. Can you keep an eye out for my daughter Chi-Chi? I sent her to go find Master Roshi yesterday and she hasn’t come back. I’m awfully worried about her…”

It was heart wrenching to see such a big guy so distraught that she answered for him, “He can look for her! What does she look like?”

“I have a picture!” He patted down his shirt and pulled forth a slightly bent polaroid. The girl in the shot was probably about Goku’s age, with dark hair and eyes, and looking absolutely adorable. “She’s all I got, that’s why I stay down here to scare people away, so they don’t take my treasure or try to hurt her.”

“Okay, got it,” Goku nods with a grin, “Be back in a flash!”

And then faster than light, he’s gone, leaving them in an abandoned village next to a raging inferno with a guy who might have tried to kill them. Actually, he had probably just meant to give them a shock to put them off, but still. Throwing an axe at their heads was a little extreme. But this wasn’t the first time this trip was turning out to be more than she bargained for.

“So,” Oolong starts nervously, “How, uh, did all this happen?”

“It was an accident,” the Ox King admits sheeplishly, “I was trying to get some bandits to go away, and then the fire got out of control. We’ve been locked out of our home ever since.”

His great shoulders slumped with guilt. She really did feel bad for the guy. Vegeta still watched him warily.

 

* * *

 

She’s absentmindedly playing with the radar when Goku zooms back in a few hours later. He has a little girl with him on his flying cloud, who all but jumps off it into her father’s arms, who’s now promising the kid that Chi-Chi could be his bride if he so chooses. She thinks it’s a little early to be running headlong into marriage, but naïve Goku doesn’t catch the implications anyway. Moments later the turtle sage himself comes spinning in some shelled creature.

“Goodness, you’ve certainly made a mess of this!” he exclaims, wobbling off his bizarre ride, “Ox King! I heard you’ve been terrorizing locals!”

The Ox King wilted under his stern gaze. Maybe this old man really was a master. “I’m so sorry Master Roshi!”

“So, do you think you can put the flames out?” she questions, “Where’s that fan they were talking about?”

“Eh, don’t have it,” Roshi shrugged, “But I have an idea or two. Besides, I need to talk to you f-for a minute, girly.”

“Huh? Me?” Bulma couldn’t imagine what he would need her for, but she went off to the side with him and Goku anyway. Only to then find that the little twerp had made a deal with him behind her back.

“C’mon, just one squeeze—“

“ _No!_ ” she fumed, “Goku, how could you!”

He blinks up at her. “I don’t see what the big deal is.”

She threw her hands up. Of course he didn’t understand what they were asking of her. Bargaining her body off for services without her consent. She was going to kill them both.

“If you do, I’ll put out the fire so you can get your dragon ball.”

Fuck. Her eyes narrow. She shouldn’t have flashed him the first time they met, because now he knew how to get her into a compromising position. But two could play at this game.

“Fine, but only after you put the fires out!”

“You’ve got a deal, girly!” The old man cackles. She felt dirty already. “Let’s get this show on the road.”

Her fury must have shown in her face and her movements because Vegeta gave her a curious look when she walks back over, but she absolutely refused to discuss the matter.

Master Roshi announced that he was going to do the deed, pulled off his turtle shell and shirt, and wheezed as climbed on top of a broken wall. He certainly didn’t look like much. Then suddenly, the wizened elder became immeasurably ripped, startling the hell out of all of them. And then he’s moving his hands in a practiced way, calling out a chant, the air about them beginning to hum. From his outstretched palms came a blast of swirling energy that rocketed towards the flames. The act stole the oxygen from the air, and filled it with crackling static. Even Vegeta was impressed.

The only downside to the display was the fact that it took the whole mountain and castle with it.

Goku wasn’t put off at all. “That was amazing! Can you teach me how to do that?”

“Teach you? Why, it would take fifty years to learn the Kamehameha!”

“Fifty years!” the small saiyan pouted, “But that’s so long!”

He moves his little hands, mimicking the master’s motions, and sends out a smaller but still very powerful blast. One that leaves them all speechless and their poor car totaled. Roshi is totally floored.

“B-but you don’t even know the basics--!”

“A simple trick,” Vegeta butts in for the first time in forever. He casually lifts a hand, and then a small orb of glowing energy gathers there, and she can’t believe he’s had that kind of power literally at his fingertips all this time. “It’s not anything special.”

The look on everyone else’s faces says that it _is_ supposed to be something special, for humans at least. “You two don’t count! You’re not even _from_  earth!”

He shrugs and dissipates the orb. “Don’t we have a ball to find?”

“The dragon ball!” Oh no, it was probably buried in the rubble of the mountain and castle. The radar says it’s nearby at least, and it’s a small miracle that it wasn’t vaporized with that blast. It’s difficult in heels to go traipsing through broken slabs of stone and destroyed structures, but hell if she doesn’t rise to the challenge, because nothing is going to get between her and that damn ball. They’ve come so far; after this, they’ll only need one more. And then they can finally see the legend in the flesh.

There it is, underneath what used to be a castle spire, beckoning with its round and shining self. This one has seven stars on it. She’s so ecstatic she could jump for joy.

Until she remembers that Goku accidentally trashed their car with his little experiment in supernatural powers.

“What are we going to do now?” She huffs heavily, ready to let Vegeta give him a good thrashing for being so careless. But then the Ox King hands her capsule with a smile.

“Here, it’s old, but it’s still fast!”

Within the cap is a small but serviceable hover cruiser. Bless the gods of technology and science and fate. It only seats three on a good day, with two small companions, but Vegeta declares he’d rather fly anyway. Something about tight spaces and idiots. They almost escape before Master Roshi steps in to have her make good on her promise.

An idea comes to her in that moment.

“Hey, Oolong...“

 

**Author's Note:**

> This all started as a very silly little rp over on tumblr. I was _supposed_ to be doing a fic for a completely different fandom for NaNoWriMo, but this idea just stuck with me and then spiraled out of control, untimely into something huge and wonderful and a little terrifying in it's scope. But I won this November, so it's too late to turn back now!
> 
> I want to give a HUGE shout out to all of my RP friends who I've met through this fandom, because you've all been amazing and I wouldn't have done this without you. c: And an enormous thank you to everyone who beta'd this chapter for me and helped edit out all my dumb mistakes, and I'm eternally grateful for your offers of help as I get the rest of the chapters ready to post! 
> 
> Thank you for reading! <3


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